Mental Instapot

How to get things done on time

Have you ever been late to something, missed a deadline, or procrastinated a bit too long? Or had a project in mind that never got completed, or never even got started? I think we've all done these things, and we've been frustrated about our inability to stick to a plan or a schedule, or to keep our commitments, despite having the best intentions upfront. Why does this happen?

Above: a useful bridge

Perhaps the best way to understand this personal problem is to look at a related phenomenon, which occurs on a much larger scale: construction projects. These seem to always run behind schedule and over budget, even though they are under intense scrutiny from both the public and investors. Though they may seem different than our individual plans, there’s a lesson to be learned from studying them.

Exhibit A: The Berlin Brandenburg airport is one of the worst disasters of project planning of all time. It took over 14 years to complete, and it was only supposed to take 6 years. The project continually missed milestones, and even when hose milestones were finally “reached” (much later than expected), the project totally failed to meet the expectations of those checkpoints. For example, during the first "grand opening," the airport had several problems, including:

• 90,000 meters of cables installed incorrectly

• 4,000 doors misnumbered

• 3,000 smoke detectors missing, and

• 1,000s of light bulbs that couldn't be turned off

Brandenburg was supposed to cost roughly $3 billion dollars, but finally cost $8 billion (over 2.5 times as much), and even now, it may need further expansions which would cost another $3 billion.

But not all projects that go beyond schedule are failures. Here's another example, one which might surprise you given the ultimate success of the final product.

Exhibit B: In 1957, the government of a wealthy nation held a contest to design a new public building that would host performances of the fine arts. This government wanted the project to be an exhibition of the both the nation's aesthetic creativity and its engineering prowess, and so they set almost no limitations on the cost or the timeline (red flag). However, initial expectations were for a cost of $7M and a timeline of four years.

In 1958, the contest's winner presented his plans to the committee, but he made it abundantly clear that his designs were only sketches, prototypes, and not fully-fledged working documents. Despite this caveat, the government urged that the project begin immediately.

Soon after work began, things immediately started going wrong. Within months, the design was dramatically changed, and the number of theaters was doubled. In addition, there was no official project manager; instead the project’s direction was shared between the designer and the chief engineer (duarchies are never a good idea). And because the project had no official budget or timeline, the plans just kept getting more grandiose, and more expensive, and more delayed. Finally, seven years after the project began, the designer abandoned the project and took his plans with him, leaving the rest of the team in the lurch. And things just kept getting worse from there.

I'll spare you the rest of the history, but ultimately the project cost not $7M, but $102M (about 14 times as expensive), and it took not 4 years, but 14 years to finish. Was the result a disaster? Actually, no. In fact, this building is considered one of the finest works of architecture of all time. The building?

Drumroll please…

The Sydney Opera House, completed in 1973. Its iconic silhouette is an instantly recognizable symbol for the entire nation of Australia. It's a masterpiece of engineering and architecture, just as the government had originally intended. What they certainly did not intend though was the overwhelming excesses in both time and money. But hey, that's what happens when you don't set a budget up front.

Now maybe you think that you have a procrastination problem, and can’t always stick to your plans, but I'm sure it's nothing compared to that.

But so why do these things happen at all? Why do we find it so hard to begin the things that we've made plans to do, and why do we find it so hard to finish on time the things we've already started? Why are we always late?

The answer, surprisingly, comes from physics. This is not just a human problem (psychology), not just an animal problem (biology), but a molecular problem. It's a principle that applies to all matter, and is easiest to study in gases, but it occurs time and again in several different fields. As I explained in a previous essay, because humans are Intelligent, we can break some of the laws of biology, and though we may not be able to break this law of physics, we can at least understand it and use it as a tool in our own lives to suit our ends.

I'm going to paraphrase a little, but here’s the idea: Boyle's Law (1662) states that a gas will always fill whatever container you put it into. You put it in a bigger container, it's going to spread out, and there will be less pressure. You put it in a smaller container, the gas will compress, things will get a little cozy, and there will be more pressure. Or, if you keep the container the same size, you can add more gas (or another gas) to increase the pressure.

Do you know how a pressure cooker like the Instapot works? Instead of taking 24 hours to cook beans or boil bones or braise beef, it takes about 1/6th the amount of time. It does that by trapping steam in the chamber, pressurizing the whole container, which has other impacts on chemistry that I won’t get into here. But essentially it let you cook hotter, which makes things go faster without burning, and without losing flavor. Plus, since modern pressure cookers are electronic, they are much safer than the oldschool ways of doing it yourself.

Can you see how this is relevant? If we go back to the Sydney Opera House example, the "container" of that project had essentially no walls. There was no timeline or budget. So the "volume" of that project just kept expanding. Therefore there was no pressure, and no reason to curb costs or qualify ambitions.

But what about in our own lives? If you force yourself to a really strict deadline (read: small container), don't you feel the pressure of it? Doesn't that pressure cause you a lot of stress and make you want to just explode? Boyle's law only holds if the container holds. If the pressure builds too much, that container will burst. And then you're left picking up the pieces (and breathing a toxic gas, possibly). An instapot is designed to handle that pressure, but the human being is a porous container, and we tend to boil over pretty easily.

So then, what's the solution? We’re saved by a law related to Boyle’s Law, which comes from economics, and it's a bit of a jokey, tongue-in-cheek law, but I assure you it's applications are not a joke. This thing is real, and it's why I'm going to such lengths to explain it. This law has some serious power behind it, and it's probably the single greatest lesson I've learned in my writing journey. I wrote last week about the momentum and growth this publication is experiencing, and this law is the main reason why. I'll mention the other reason at the end.

Above: Credit Jack Ziegler

Parkinson's Law states that "work expands to fill the time allotted for it." Or more specifically, that a bureaucracy will expand, regardless of the amount of work to be done, because officials prefer to have subordinates, and will make work for each other.

So if you give a government department a project, rather than focusing on getting the project done as quickly as possible (like a business would, in a competitive market), the people at top are just going to keep delegating the work down, and they'll keep hiring new people if they run out of people to delegate to, and then those people will just keep delegating to their peers, and so on. It's obviously worse with a government institution, but it also happens at very large companies. Perhaps you've experienced this when trying to get something simple done at a large organization, government or otherwise, like getting your car registered, paying your taxes, making a claim with your medical insurance, or simply getting your order correct (or correctly refunded).

While Parkinson’s Law mostly applies to issues at the organizational level, I think you can see immediately how it applies to our own work. Think back to school: if you have an essay or an exam or a project that is due in 5 days, how long will it take you? About 5 days. But if you are given 5 weeks to do the same project, how long will it take you? About 5 weeks. How is this possible? Parkinson's Law tells us that if we have more time to do the project, we're going to take all that time to do it. We'll get more done in 5 weeks, surely, but will it be 7 times as good as the project that had only 5 days to be completed? Probably not.

There's a satirical extension to Parkinson's law that states, "if you wait until the last minute, it will only take one minute." And obviously this is the extreme opposite, where too much compression will make the project completely ineffective. But there must be some sweet spot between 5 weeks and 1 minute. So what is it? Well, to find the answer, we have to understand a few related issues.

Programmers and project managers are well aware of the biggest plague to any digital project- scope creep. This can happen too on the previously mentioned construction projects, and it does all the time, but the effects on products made in cyberspace are even more insidious. Basically what happens is that somebody working on the project thinks of a cool new feature that it would be nice to add, and they decide that they might as well build it since their hands are already dirty.

For example, on the construction project, if the designs call for a fireplace, you realize while you are building that that you might as well build a mantel over it. And a mantel is no good without a painting over it. But a painting is no good if it doesn't have some lighting to shine on it, so then you decide to build some little torches next to where the painting would go, above the mantel.. But those torches now change the weight on the chimney, so that has to be redesigned. And now the new chimney changes the angle of the roof, so the roof has to be rebuilt. And that changes the weight on the walls, and... well you get the point.

It's obvious how a project like the Sydney Opera house can be subject to scope creep, but in the world of computers, it's even worse. If you want to build a new feature in a software application, all it takes is a few more lines of code. Right? Right?? Well, no, because code is similar to a physical building in that each part is interwoven and relies on the other. So while it seems easy to add features in programming, the cost of additional complexity is often underappreciated.

With our own personal projects, whether that be a new year's resolution we want to keep, or a new hobby we want to incorporate, a chore that's just gotta get done, or a creative endeavor (like writing essays every week), we experience a similar level of distraction. And it's not just that our minds balk as they consider all the features we could include in the project, but also because they’re simultaneously evaluating all the various possible ways we could complete the project, and most significantly, all the other things we could be doing with that time. Which is why we often fall pray to diversions, whether that be TV, instagram, reddit, youtube, Xbox. We'll even justify our little breaks as being somehow "productive," whether that be sleeping just a little longer, taking a water break, doing a quick stretch, cleaning the house, watering the herbs, dusting the china... whatever.¹

So taking into account the endless alternatives and diversions, scope creep, Boyle's law, and Parkinson's law, we're now in a place to appreciate one final law that will finally unravel this whole sticky mess. The Yerkes-Dodson Law states that there is an optimal level of arousal for a given activity. If there is too much stress, we will feel overwhelmed and want to give up. But if there is too little stress, then we get bored and start to daydream and then seek excitement elsewhere.

Going back to the example of the pressurized container, we've all felt the sensation of being under too much stress, of being out of our depth, and that just makes us want to shut down. But we also know that the container is too large (the boundaries are too loose), then the project is still going to expand and fill that container.

The key is finding that appropriate balance of arousal; I call it eustress. Not all stress is bad. The stress we get from exercise causes our muscles to break down and suffer minor tears, but when they rebuild, they rebuild stronger. The stress of flirting with an attractive person is also a good thing. The butterflies in our stomach are both scary and invigorating. It makes the whole thing so much more exciting, and in a weird way, pleasurable. Peer pressure and societal expectations can often be negative, but they can also be something that encourages us to conform to well-established principles of wisdom and health. It feels good to be lazy and stay at home in our sweatpants, but the stress of shame and unproductivity can motivate us to get moving and do something valuable. The expectations of others (real or imagined) can be one of the best medicines for getting things done on time.

The proper level of difficulty is difficult to determine, and there's no one size fits all. I've written before about the amazing phenomenon of Flow, and optimal arousal is just one element of that. I think the best illustration is a competitive game, whether that be a sport like tennis or football, or a video game like Halo. And it doesn't matter if you are watching or participating. If you are way worse than your opponent, it's going to be a massacre, and you're going to feel like you want to cry out of humiliation. But if the roles are reversed, it's going to be like taking candy from a baby, and you're going to cry out of pity, or maybe boredom. Instead, if you are both properly matched, it's going to be exhilarating. Every point will matter, every decision will be do-or-die.

There are perhaps a dozen different techniques for creating the optimal container for your project (or modifying the pressure accordingly), ensuring the optimal level of arousal, creating eustress instead of distress, and limiting scope creep. But I'm just going to mention two here.

The first, is setting a routine. I've written about that previously, but suffice it to say that our minds (and bodies) love patterns and rhythms. Whether that be a sleep/wake cycle, a dietary/exercise regimen, or the time of day that works best for you to do something creative, if you can ensure that you do it consistently, it will generate a large amount of momentum that automatically takes away a lot of the distractions. When you know that you have set aside, say one hour, for creative writing, or for exercise, then you can be fully present during that allotted time, and don't have to wonder if you could be spending that time better doing something else. You can trust that this is the best thing to be doing right now.

And the second, of course, is picking a very specific timeline (and/or budget). And more importantly, STICKING TO IT. No matter what. If you anticipate delays or interruptions or obstacles, then get ahead on things, build margin into the timeline, or if necessary, just cut the project short and send it half-finished. They say "better late than never," but in my experience it's rather "better half-finished than never finished." Because I can keep putting things off forever. Believe me, I'm a pro at that.

When we add the routine and the deadline, we create a mental instapot. We can precisely modify the pressure of our environment, which allows us to operate way more quickly and efficiently, and with better guarantees of success (and safety).

This essay itself has been experiencing a sort of bloom, and as I write these words, I realize that my deadline is fast approaching, and I've got to wrap it up quickly.

The inspiration behind this entire essay is the unprecedented success I've realized in writing this publication. I mentioned last week that I've surprised myself by publishing every single Wednesday for the last 8 weeks (today is week 9). I've technically been publishing essays since a year ago, but I was so inconsistent it was laughable. Some weeks I'd publish three pieces, and sometimes I'd go months without publishing a single word.

What finally started this streak, was the advice of my good friend Taylor Foreman. And by the way, please check out his substack; he's an incredible writer. But so anyways I was planning this massive essay (like 30,000 words or something) and it kept just growing and growing. And the topic, of course, was the freedom vs. limits theme which we've now been talking about for several weeks. And so Taylor finally said, "I think you need to take your own advice. You need to set some limits. Just start publishing." And it finally clicked. I decided to break up that monolith into a bunch of smaller stones, and carry the loads up the hill one at a time. I would publish one essay, every Wednesday, no matter what. Sometimes the essays are very short. Sometimes they are long. But we're moving that rock, one trip at a time.

So earlier I said that Parkinson's Law is the main reason why I've experienced so much growth and momentum, and that I'd explain the other reason at the end. The other reason is the expectations and encouragements of others. I've written previously about how critical this is to staying (and getting back) on track. And so that's been true here, with Taylor in the first place, and now you, the reader, who I imagine in my mind’s eye reading these words week by week (whether you really do or not, it doesn’t matter. But of course if you choose to argue with me, then that validates the entire process.).

So in summary, when we deal with issues of procrastination, of distraction, of wanting to break our commitments, or alter our resolutions, or things are just taking too long and going way over budget, the solution is to remember the stories of the Sydney Opera house, or container full of gas. We know that our minds will constantly seek distraction if we don't find the optimal level of arousal, and scope creep will endlessly expand the project, so that the work fills the time allotted for it. The solution, then, is finding the appropriate level of difficulty, which provides eustress. And we can maintain this by creating to a routine and an appropriate timeline, and sticking to it, which is greatly aided by the expectations and encouragement of others around us (both friends and foes).

When we do all this, we create a mental instapot.

May you find as much success and momentum and pleasure with your projects as I've found here. Thank you for reading. Please share this with someone who could benefit from it (or who would like to argue about it with me).

1. “In real life, of course, concentrated deskwork doesn’t go this way. I had spent massive amounts of time in libraries; I knew quite well how deskwork really was. Especially if the task at hand was dry or repetitive, or dense, or if it involved reading something that had no direct relevance to your own life and priorities, or was work that you were doing only because you had to—like for a grade, or part of a freelance assignment for pay from some lout who was off skiing. The way hard deskwork really goes is in jagged little fits and starts, brief intervals of concentration alternated with frequent trips to the men’s room, the drinking fountain, the vending machine, constant visits to the pencil sharpener, phone calls you suddenly feel are imperative to make, rapt intervals of seeing what kinds of shapes you can bend a paperclip into, & c. ...

This is because sitting still and concentrating on just one task for an extended length of time is, as a practical matter, impossible. If you said, ‘I spent the whole night in the library, working on some client’s sociology paper,’ you really meant that you’d spent between two and three hours working on it and the rest of the time fidgeting and sharpening and organizing pencils and doing skin-checks in the men’s room mirror and wandering around the stacks opening volumes at random and reading about, say, Durkheim’s theories of suicide.”

—David Foster Wallace, The Pale King